Message: 3
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 21:04:27 -0500
From: "portside moderator" <moderator at portside.org> Subject: Responses to "Haiti's Collapse."
There were many strong reactions to Amy Wilentz' article, "Haiti's Collapse," from the Nation. Here are four of them.
For the original article - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portside/message/5491
1. From: Jack Zylman Date: Mon Feb 16, 2004 RE: Haiti's Collapse
This article seems to tell me that the CIA has moved into the offices of the Nation. The CIA has been behind the various assaults on the Haitian people and on Aristide ever since he came into prominence.
Maxine Waters has visited Haiti a number of times and can be considered an expert on Haiti, as can John Conyers. Her view is very different, as can be seen by her earlier article broadcast on Portside.
One thing we need to know: Where is Emanuel Constant, former head of the official terrorist organization FRAPH? The last I heard, he was living nicely in Queens. Google has nothing written since 1995 on its page 1 of a search on his name.
==== 2. From: John Lacny Date: Mon Feb 16, 2004 Re: [portside] Haiti's Collapse
Amy Wilentz's studied neutrality in the face of the brutal reactionary assault on the popularly elected government of Haiti -- so typical of journalists for The Nation when push comes to shove -- is nothing short of offensive. From the self-important opening sentence ("The Aristide administration . . . has been egalitarian in the lives destroyed during its time") that essentially blames Aristide for the violence, through a closing paragraph that more or less says "Those colorful darkies just aren't ready for democracy," you won't learn a damn thing from Amy Wilentz.
I suppose it's too much for us to expect our alternative, "progressive" media to debunk the pile of nonsense about Haiti that the commercial media have dumped on our heads for several weeks now. For example, the notion that the gangsters who have taken over Gonaives are "former supporters of Aristide" angered by the assassination of Amiot Metayer. In reality, the "cannibal army" in Gonaives is headed by Jean Tatoune, whose opposition to Aristide dates to the LAST coup -- in fact, Tatoune informed on Metayer for the coup regime, and was rewarded for it after the paramilitaries perpetrated the Raboteau massacre. Tatoune was a member of FRAPH. That's who's leading the counterrevolutionary rebellion in Gonaives, and he's doing it in conjunction with former FRAPH gangsters and other macoutes, some of whom are now pouring over the border from the Dominican Republic in the hopes of once again taking down the "red priest." But you wouldn't know that from reading Amy Wilentz, would you? Hardly, since she was responsible for an article in the LA Times back in October that both called Metayer a "thug" AND lent credence to the right-wing charge that he was murdered by Aristide.
(For the gory details on this see http://www.blackcommentator.com/63/63_haiti_2.html )
A wise man once said that facts are stubborn things, but apparently the facts are too boring for novelists who like to wax lyrical about "the cock-fighters and garbage-pickers, numbers-runners, whores and money-changers," and set up sad morality plays in which "rarely has a leader failed so grossly to rise to a historic occasion," in which we progressives in the US supposedly do not have to take a side. We should ask that our alternative media provide us with better information and analysis than this facile liberal bullshit.
John Lacny
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!
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From: dora brown Date: Mon Feb 16, 2004 Re: Haiti's Collapse
Amy Wilentz article really makes my blood boil. Let's give another perspective on the current events unfolding in Haiti. For this one will have to have a holistic view of current events. We will start with Sierra Leone, I remember when the trouble started, we, who had lived and gone to school there and have a parent buried there where a little confused. As a friend who had gone back to live and had to return asked, "Why, if these individuals destroying the infrastructure of the society? Why are they burning fields, destroying farming equipment, terrorizing ordinary civilians and spreading terror and mayhem? Why are the police stations, courthouses, record offices being burned to the ground? Why are the hospitals being looted and the staff terrorized? We then asked the same question when it happened in Liberia not so long ago? Why did it require international assistance for it to succeed in Liberia? The strength of Charles Taylor's government and the control that was still being exerted over the governing system was still in place. It was then necessary to demonize Taylor, do what Ms. Wilentz and her kind are so good at doing, muddy the waters and use all those euphemisms that speak to the so called "civilized world" when discussing peoples of color. Eventually, the UN assisted these New World Order ... to take over the countries of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Foday Sankoh their boy in Sierra Leone was turned into a vegetable on a boat of the coast of Sierra Leone, a kangaroo court convened and this wreck of a man dragged before it slobbering and mindless to be tried for war crimes. This was the same man whom the UN/UK/US had forced those his forces had mutilated and maimed to accept as the Minister of Mines. After all, this was about the diamonds in Kono and Sefadu. These became a gift to one of gang, I guess it went to the UK after all their soldiers prepared the ground. We then turn to Liberia, the arms used by the LURD and other group came, for the LURD from Sierra Leone and Guinea, after all that had already been taken over, Guinea has a leader who depends on the LURD leader's wife, who now says she is the power behind the throne, for spiritual and moral guidance. The other group were financed from Ivory Coast when the destabilization was occurrring by US special forces who landed in a field supposedly to evacuate the American expatriate community. We all saw the TV reports, the US citizens said the French evacuated them. We never again saw the US special forces, instead, the agreement that had been ironed out between the rebels in the north and the government in the south, suddenly fell apart. The French, whose special relationship with its former colonies is now being challenged by the New World Order, then set up the buffer between the government forces and the rebels. It was then we started seeing government loyalists waving the flag of the US with Bush on all their placards. There is still a stalemate on that front. Back to Liberia, after failing to dislodge Taylor, and failing to get the government of Ghana to do their work for them and arrest Taylor when he attended the peace talks, the NWO gang then anchored off the coast of Liberia ferrying in weapons to the insurgents. In spite of all the efforts of the drugged and heavily armed children soldiers (same as in Sierra Leone, DRCongo drugs and guns in the hands of children) the insurgents were unable to dislodge Taylor. Who got called in, Africa's surrogate for the US, Abasanjo came supposedly to smooth over matters, offering asylum to Taylor. The people of Liberia had by now being so brutalized and traumatized that they would have welcomed the devil if he promised Peace and no more war, and the devil they did get, Jacques Klein under the banner of the UN riding shotgun on a UN peacekeeping vehicle waving a knobkerrie. There is a similar thread that runs through all the misery, mayhem and crimes against humanity being committed on the soil of Africa. Since the circus master is the US, and we all know how the US deals with race; we can expect more of the same. We, Africans, Haitiens etc., are not blameless, after all, what we see on tv is a bunch of black men running around slaughtering their own kind, and we already know from our experience on the Mothership that this, in the long and short run, serves the purpose of those in power. The national guard only comes out when the lives of whites and their property is threatened. So, what used to be a uniquely American pathology is now global. Ms. Wilentz, you can run that crap to your own kind and those wannabes who would support any opinion that avoids their having to take and stand and speak out against the genocide, neo colonialism and imperialistic land and natural resources grab that is now going on, but please!!! don't add insult to injury. The only reason the US first got involved, was because they would have lost it all. Running interference and promising aid, that by the way, was never delivered. The opposition, yah! the opposition, isn't one of the 60 Minutes correspondents heavily involved in Haiti? Where were you during the time of Duvalier? Aren't his and the rest of those sent into exile now returning? Was it the celebration of the 200 Anniversary the catalyst for this? We watch Cuba and hear Castro talk about what is being attempted against him again. We watch Chavez and watch the attempts to destabilize and overthrow a democratically elected government. All I know is that any government that talks about raising the standard of living for the great unwashed masses seems to come into conflict with the New World Order. At least let us hear from others who speak for the voiceless billions against whom crimes against humanity are being committed daily. The millions who live as refugees in their own countries depending on the handouts from the faith based, and conservative run ngos and other organizations running around all over the non "civilized world." These are providing jobs for all those who are the children of the New World Order. All I grieve for is the millions of my brothers and sisters who have no understanding of the forces that are not tearing their worlds apart and have the young prostituting themselves for pittance. The rest suffering from psychological conditions that only be known from having lived as a refugee, and having lived in a camp can produce. I do not blame the Amy Wilentz, I blame all those so called progressives and liberals who have abnegated their responsibilities and choose to believe this crap because it somehow absolves them from getting involved. What happened to those wonderful individuals that I found in this country when I arrived in 1972? I guess they are like the flowers, long time passed and now ...
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4. From: edmoser Date: Mon Feb 16, 2004 Re: Haiti's Collapse
Amy Wilentz writes that the gods must help the politician the street has turned against, that no one can rule without its support. Does she mean to suggest that the "street" supported Papa Doc and Baby Doc?
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-- Michael Pugliese